A couple of years ago – in 2013 to be exact – I wrote part of a story called Escape for NaNoWriMo. I hit 50K with it in spite of a lot of stuff going on in my life, but because of all the stuff I kind of forgot to validate it so it’s not an OFFICIAL win. Still, I wrote the big five-oh and did a little butt dance in my room. The only problem was that it wasn’t even close to being finished.

Flash forward to earlier this month when I decided to merge two Wattpad accounts. I have about 10 weeks worth of Drowned History left to publish and decided I was going to start updating Escape so that it could be my next online project.

To quote Sublime, that’s when things got out of control.

I decided to work on an outline that would incorporate both the old and new stuff. Needing more background on characters led me to work on character sheets, which then ended up being about four pages long each. Now I’m working on a synopsis to go before the outline.

I was considering just self-pubbing this story once I get through with it but it’s kind of looking like it’s going to be a beast, so I decided I was going to break it into three. I even figured out natural break points between books. Then I remembered ANOTHER story I had partially written that could be in this same universe. Like I said, out of control.

Then there’s the issue that I have no idea what genre to even call this story. It’s got spaceships but it’s not really sci-fi. It’s got dystopian elements but I think people would be disappointed if I advertised it as that. There’s also a very weird “romance” that’s actually almost platonic. Really it’s just about the people trying to escape shitty circumstances in a variety of ways and I don’t have a clue how to describe it.

So I’m working on this story and trying to come up with an idea for a trilogy or series name (you need one of those, right?) and it’s all kind of giving me choice paralysis. I still plan on putting it up while I’m writing it because without a genre audience I doubt anyone would publish it, but it’s starting to eat my life and I can’t decide if that’s a good thing or not. I still need to start editing The Weather.

Why did I start my new Wattpad account with the name Vic Quest and why is it my display name on Twitter (for now)? You can actually thank my boss for that one.

When I got my hair cut last December he said I needed a new name, one that fit my new hair. I said I like the name Vic (way too many rewatches of The Shield) and he said it was a cool name. He also said that he knew a girl named Jen Quest, and that it was a cool last name. So on that fateful day he dubbed me Vic Quest, and he occasionally refers to me as such, usually in regards to my writing. He let me borrow a book for research earlier this year, asking if it was for my writing and wishing Vic Quest luck in finding what she needed in a veterinary parasitology textbook. What she was looking for will have to be a surprise for all of you, I’m afraid.

It was sort of a joke and I fully intended to put Vic Quest on my book covers on Wattpad, but the girl who did the covers for me (they’re serious sully the best premades I have ever seen) put my actual name on the cover of Drowned History and I decided to go with it. I merged the two accounts but left my username as Vic Quest.

I don’t know if I ever explained the whole VQ thing on Twitter before but I figured I probably should since I changed my display name to have it before my actual boring name. It’s not like I really have a personal brand on there anyway apart from retweeting cat nonsense and pictures of what we made for dinner.

Work on Escape continues. It seems like it’s going to end up being a series of sorts. From what I have and what still needs to be written, it’ll probably be around 100,000 words. A little excessive for one book, even an ebook. Might be perfect to split into two, or maybe even three. Trilogies are good, right? People love trilogies.